Fukuhara Shunichi, Green Joseph, Wakita Takafumi, Yamamoto Yosuke, Yamazaki Hajime, Ware John E
Section of Clinical Epidemiology, Department of Community Medicine, Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto, Japan.
CiRCLE and Shirakawa STAR, Fukushima Medical University, Fukushima, Japan.
Sci Rep. 2025 Jul 1;15(1):21756. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-05963-5.
When measuring disease-specific quality of life (QOL), scores from different instruments can almost never be compared, so clinical and research questions involving more than one disease cannot be answered. To overcome that limitation, the Quality of Life Disease Impact Scale (QDIS-7) uses standardized content and only one metric. We tested whether QDIS-7 scores are comparable across diseases. In an online survey, 2,627 adults who had sought care for headache, low-back pain, asthma, or diabetes, responded to the QDIS-7 and to a previously-validated disease-specific QOL instrument ("legacy scale") that measured QOL in their specific disease. Using the slopes of four independent regressions of legacy-scale scores on QDIS-7 scores, we tested the hypothesis that QDIS-7 scores can be compared across those four different medical conditions. The four regression-line slopes were nearly identical: 0.12 to 0.14 legacy-scale standard deviations per 1-point difference in QDIS-7 score. Thus, each 10-point difference in QDIS-7 scores was equal to slightly more than one standard-deviation difference in legacy-scale scores, for all four groups. The equivalence of the four slopes supports the use of the QDIS-7 to compare disease-specific QOL across different medical conditions. Thus, QDIS-7 users can answer clinical and research questions that are otherwise impossible to address.
在测量特定疾病的生活质量（QOL）时，几乎无法比较不同测评工具得出的分数，因此涉及一种以上疾病的临床和研究问题无法得到解答。为克服这一局限，生活质量疾病影响量表（QDIS - 7）采用了标准化内容且仅使用一种度量标准。我们测试了QDIS - 7分数在不同疾病之间是否具有可比性。在一项在线调查中，2627名曾因头痛、腰痛、哮喘或糖尿病就医的成年人对QDIS - 7以及一种先前经验证的特定疾病生活质量测评工具（“传统量表”）做出了回应，该传统量表用于测量他们所患特定疾病的生活质量。通过对传统量表分数与QDIS - 7分数进行四项独立回归分析的斜率，我们检验了QDIS - 7分数可在这四种不同医疗状况之间进行比较的假设。四条回归线的斜率几乎相同：QDIS - 7分数每相差1分，相当于传统量表标准差相差0.12至0.14。因此，对于所有四组而言，QDIS - 7分数每相差10分，就相当于传统量表分数相差略多于一个标准差。四条斜率的等同性支持使用QDIS - 7来比较不同医疗状况下特定疾病的生活质量。因此，使用QDIS - 7的人员能够回答那些原本无法解决的临床和研究问题。
